If we didn' rely on the collective knowledge passed down through word of mouth from years past, we'd all have a bunch of dead snakes.

Science is a growing collection of knowledge, proven time and time again. There is nothing wrong with challenging our theories, but it takes more than one guy to say "You didnt do it yourself, so you have no right" to convince many that it is bad advice.

There is absolutely no harm in keeping snakes separate. For all our purposes here, which is to keep things simple, why not?

I imagine the keeping snakes seperate came from many keepers in the past finding PROBLEMS with keeping snakes together, since the common thought of many newbies is to put the two snakes together! Not the other way around.

People tend to put our emotions on any animal in our posession, so who wants to make a snake be lonely in a huge tank? No, they want to get him a friend. If this worked, then we wouldn't have many experienced keepers saying with a resounding "No" to that method.